Most reviewers don't believe in any benefit to burning them in. I am NOT one of those. I suspect burn in is likely good for any electrical component, open backed headphones (and similarly, dipole loud speakers, for the same reasons) even more so. A few years ago I bought a lightly used pair of AKG K701 as my first taste of open backed cans. The guy I bought them from said he probably had around 100 hours on them. I listened to them for a day or two and some of my favorite songs sounded too detailed and possibly too bright. I literally plugged them into a source+amp, put them around the listening level I would normally enjoy and stuffed them in a mostly empty dresser drawer for a solid week (168 hours). A very noticeable improvement on my test tracks. Songs that had too much sibilance on my first listen were now decidedly much tamer and easier to listen to. The rest of the frequencies seemed to blend better together as well, a smoother transition perhaps. A year later, when I sold them (the bumps hurt my head), after hundreds of more hours, the K701 were the best sounding headphones I had heard to date.
I'm an old muscle car guy. When you build an engine and fire it up for the first time how you run it is critical. After it's first oil change or three, when you are truly ready to "break it in" one school of thought says "drive it nice". I'm not from that school. The way I break in engines is to drive it the way you will in day to day use. If it's going to spend it's life on the drag strip then you break it in on the drag strip.
For me headphones are like that, especially open backed cans, possibly even more so when it comes to the AKG seven series. Some will say pink noise is what you should use. You can actually buy CDs of tracks "designed" for headphone burn in. My opinion? Put on what you listen to, put it on shuffle and repeat, set the volume where you would normally listen. Burn them in. Just my US$0.02 worth.
Thanks, that actually makes sense. The only reason I would prefer starting with the standard pink/brown noise is because the K7XX does sound a bid harsh in the treble.
After that, like
kleefurd /img/forum/go_quote.gif suggested, I'll blast some Apex twins through them
.
Quote:
No reason to go anywhere when you can download/burn for free: http://www.jlabaudio.com/pages/audio-burn-in
(just one example)
Burn-in files are just frequency sweeps, pink and white noise, and silence usually.
Thanks, I'll try that today.
Quote:
I use these with an NFB-15. What exactly did you want to know? I can't say how it pairs compared to other setups outside of my X3, but it sounds great.
The NFB-15 has been one of my best purchases. I gave up a M/M stack mostly for functionality and all-in-one layout. It let's me use my headphones and control my active monitors on a small desk. I can run it through USB, optical and even hook up my X3 to it if I want to take it to a meet and don't feel like bring a computer. Driver installation was painless.
I suppose you could say I recommend it for the K7XX as well as many other cans. It's hard to beat at the price point; Although, the new Uber M2/M2 stack has me curious with them finally adding more functionally, but with CA tax the NFB-15 is cheaper.
What I want to know is whether this is the best value purchase I can make. I have no prior experience with external DACs, so it's really hard for me to make an informed decision, hence I'm here.
When I discovered the NFB-15, I've been very impressed, especially with it's internals as compared to the aforementioned M/M, or the Objective combo (because this
http://goo.gl/cSvRrZ just cannot be better than this
http://goo.gl/m5n3ee, right?). This continued with reading their site, once I got over the layout, or the lack thereof. Then I've contacted their support to see what they have to say and they recommended I'd get the NFB-11 if I want quicker sound, with better extension on the highs (paraphrasing).
If I were to decide solely based upon looks, like
TMRaven /img/forum/go_quote.gif has suggested in his comparison thread (
http://goo.gl/83KwyV), I'd get the M2/M2 without ever looking back, I mean just look at this
http://goo.gl/UiKjhk. But like I've already said, I suspect all of those options don't entirely stack up to each other, which makes it tougher to pick.
To give you some perspective though - currently I have no other option than to listen to the K7XX through the laptop headphone out, and while this it sounds better than my K272, with a wider soundstage, punchier bass and livelier sound overall, I can't say I'm entirely satisfied. I'm not really accustomed to the audiophile jargon yet, but the K7XX sound a tad muffled to me, like it lacks clarity, and this is what I am hoping to remedy with the acquisition of a DAC. Needless to say that the laptop is barely getting it to my preferred listening volume, which is what the amp is for.
In essence, am I missing something here, or can I safely pull the trigger and get the NFB-11?
